Moreover, the framework which will allow the audience to understand colour-blind

casting in this way is not to be found within the specific production text. According to
Angela C. Pau, colour-blind casting depends on ‘a happy complicity between director
and audience. . . . This accord is founded on shared socio-cultural conditions, familiar
theatrical protocols and . . . a common state of mind’ (27). This accord would seem to
be more available for regular theatregoers though many publically funded theatres run
educational events aimed particularly at young audiences to familiarize them with theatrical
protocols. More than anything else, this accord seems to depend on the common
notion that audiences need to suspend disbelief in the theatre and that the stage is a
magical place where anything can happen.
Further comments from the RSC provide evidence of what the audience is meant
to do in relation to colour-blind casting. On the one hand, in line with Thompson’s
analysis, the audience is meant to accept casting which does not necessarily align with
the characters’ ethnicity and to ignore any questions of plausibility that might arise.
When asked about possible tension between ‘casting an actor because they are the best
for that role’ and the possibility that ‘on stage, the materiality of that casting decision
takes on significance’, RSC producer Kevin Fitzmaurice, interviewed along with Miller,
responded rather bluntly that:
[f]or an audience member, you are in a theatre and you are suspending disbelief anyway. When a
young white male actor has a black mother, an audience of a certain
generation may have an issue with that because they just can’t get their head into this place.
But I think most people do accept it. (qtd. in Rogers and Thorpe, “Interview with the RSC’s
Hannah Miller” 489)
On the other hand, the audience is not meant to ignore the diversity exemplified by
the cast as a whole. Miller stressed that the RSC’s ambition is ‘to try to ensure that the
demographic of Britain is reflected’ (qtd. in “Interview with the RSC’s Hannah Miller”
489) and the RSC’s 2018 statement reiterated this: ‘We are proud that this [policy] ensures our
casts are also representative of the diversity of the United Kingdom, that the
audiences which we serve are able to recognise themselves on stage’ (qtd. in Sidique).
In this formulation, it would appear that ‘bringing in the best actors’ will automatically
lead to the creation of a diverse cast, with the result that the audience can recognize
diversity as a social phenomenon and find an actor with whom they can identify in
terms of their own identity. The implication is that this applies particularly to BAME
audience members who have been deprived of doing this up until now.
The policy of colour-blind casting thus seems to have two aims: to encourage casting
practices which remove race and ethnicity as criteria for acting in a role and to put
on stage or screen casts which will reflect what is deemed to be the ethnic diversity of
contemporary Britain. In terms of reception, these aims can mean that the audience is
put in a somewhat contradictory position in terms of BAME actors. On the one hand,
audiences are expected not to take ethnicity and skin colour as semiotically significant
while, on the other, they are meant to recognize that the cast as a whole represents a
society marked by multicultural diversity. Given these dual and not always compatible aims, it is
perhaps not surprising that the application of a policy which points in
different directions is likely to be rather messy and have outcomes that are not always